• Part I: Towards experiencing art “within a breathing space”0:19
  • Part II: Strange activities in front of the medieval painting2:18
  • Part III: What happened on the Riga to Dubulti train?3:05
  • Part IV: How should we teach art history?4:03

The essay, Within Breathing Space or Through a Cracked Divider?  is about two collective activities at art history symposia held in Warsaw and Riga in 2024. The first—titled Sounding Gestures: Alongside the Winterfeld Diptych by Kirsten Stromberg, an artist and educator, and Benedetta Manfriani, a singer and interdisciplinary artist—took place at the National Museum in Warsaw. The second, titled Lost and Found Office. Railway, was situated on the Riga to Dubulti train and was staged by textile students from the Art Academy of Latvia. The first event was a workshop in which participants were invited to respond physically and vocally to a medieval painting. The focus was on using gestures, shouts, grunts, sighs, and chants, emphasizing embodied expression over intellectual analysis. The second event involved an artistic intervention in the daily lives of commuters traveling by train between the suburbs and Riga. The aim was to inspire empathy among passengers by encouraging reactions to unexpected artworks carried onboard by artists. This transformed the otherwise “empty” time of the journey into moments of creativity and inspiration.  Performativity emerged here, with multisensoriality and an expressive audiosphere becoming embodied and interactive practices. Could the activities discussed serve as suggestions for teaching art history?  In these two activities an artistic situation was created to foster a new understanding of art, one that awakened the creative potential of participants who are usually regarded as passive recipients of facts, dates, and technical terms.